Talk:Twitch/@comment-13203425-20150603122927
I think a good way to buff twitch is to strengthen his poison flask (w). Currently, it is barely a skill doing no damage itself and causing a small slow and it isn't even a persistent area effect. The only redeeming quality it has is applying 2 poison stacks which indirectly does some damage, which is much lower than most other skills. His ult makes him a very strong hypercarry, but unlike most other strong carries his ult lasts only 7 seconds on a greater than 100 second cooldown, so he definitely fits into riots philosophy of strong peak moments and visible moments of vulnerability. The closest other carries to this is ashe's new q, which isn't even an ultimate, and vaynes ult which is the only other ult steroide on a ranged adc. however, vayne still has her passive silver bolts which is mostly the real reason she is considered a hypercarry. I think if twitch were ever to be buffed against, there are 2 routes. When he was nerfed most recently, they nerfed his base damage and his poison damage to emphasize his weak laning (when he was strong, he wasn't exactly a bully in lane but he was right under the big bullies, graves and lucian. Mf still countered him with her strong bullying and draven is a weird case of conditional strength, but twitch was kinda like jinx in that his laning had kill potential while not being considered a bully). However, at the same time that they nerfed his early damage, they made his q timer to enter stealth 6 seconds upon taking damage. Before, it was 3 seconds. Basically it was a minigame of catch the mouse, where he would try to escape using q. Before when it was 20-50 seconds, unless you had vision detection he basically disappeared and got away. To give him power in his kit, they severely cut his stealth time and gave him ms to make him healthier, but they cut the time low enough that even if you managed to enter stealth with enough teamwork on the enemy team it was still possible to catch you, let alone use true vision (the oracle and pink rework made this less reliable however). If they managed to hurt you, they would delay your stealth to 3 seconds which is adequate time to squish a rat, and if your team peeled properly or they somehow lacked damaged you could escape. At 6 seconds, if anything hits you it takes longer to enter stealth than you are invisible till lvl 3 q. A stray minion hitting you is pretty infuriating, and the minigame of catch the mouse basically just becomes a slaughter. The feel of this delay is very negative and I believe is the ultimate qol nerf, even moreso than the huge stealth timer reduction. Simply reverting this while keeping his lowish early game damage would be fine. My idea for putting strength into his w is to make it a much more interesting skill. I believe the amount of poison stacks it applies should increase for each level, in addition to increasing the max amount of stacks in his passive. Currently, his w is obvious final max, but if it had a worthwhile effect then it could compete with his q for second max. This idea came to me as I was looking at kalistas e. It basically hurts more on the first attack and each subsequent attack, in addition to scaling with max ad instead of bonus ad. In addition to slowing all enemies similar to twitches old w being fused into his expunge, but it also refreshes mana and cd on kill. Not to mention it scales infinitely. I don't believe many of these ideas are conducive to twitch, he already has a slow in a different skill. The reset on kill kind of makes thematic sense considering expunge is now contaminate, but the real point i'm trying to make is that kalista's e can stack infinitely. This would obviously be problematic considering his poison true damage and his e, but if his w were to increase his passives max stacks per level, it could begin at 5 stacks and end at 10 stacks when w is maxed. This would make the maximum damage of expunge 430 + 2.5 bonus ad, approximately the same as a crit and around the same damage as a fully stacked tristana e, except without all the reset shenanigans. He would still have a vulnerable early game reliant on farming and his sup and jungler setting up any and all kills, but his mid and late game would receive a buff, make his w a funner skill and give him a choice of hyperscaling sooner by maxing q for the attackspeed buff or buffing his poison gameplay a bit more by maxing his poison flask.